From Ecumenical News International via ELO:
“The rest of the world needs to know that apart from press coverage in the West, the gay issue is not a pre-occupation of the poor,” said the Zambian-born [Trevor] Mwamba. “And we don’t want it imposed on us as a priority agenda. Our agenda is about basic survival, food for the hungry, and we cannot focus on other agendas. In the words of a Swahili proverb, ‘An empty stomach has no ears to hear with’.”
Mwamba added, “I can only pray that the media will be as passionate in reporting on these issues as they are on the homosexual debate.”
…
His call for what he believed would be better and more balanced reporting on African issues came only a few weeks after Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said in an interview with ENI that for some people in the media, morality means sex.
“In the Bible,” Williams said, “morality means justice, compassion, and the defence of the needy. It means humility, realism and questioning, repentance and generosity. That’s quite a lot to be going on with.”
For more on his thoughts on Africa and Anglicanism, see Mwamba’s paper, A Holy Mess and the Grace of Ambiguity, delivered earlier this summer at the 2008 Modern Churchpeople’s Conference. Thinking Anglicans has a round up of the papers delivered at the MCU conference.